Some guy

SO there is this dude who calls in for tech support saying he is unable to ping his ip address. He has a dynamic ip (a residential account) so all I want to know is whether or not he can browse the web. He can browse, he can check email- why is he bothering me. He thinks he should be able to ping but he has no idea how pinging works.

Firstly- is his modem going to allow an incoming ping request? No answer.

Secondly, is the machine behind the modem (al-be-it masked by a NAT Firewall) going to respond to the request? No.

So I try to give him some knowledge and let him know he needs to reconceptualize things. Punk.

I called the Internet Admin and asked them if we block things- nope we don't . What makes matters worse is that residential customers aren't supposed to be able to ping- he was surprised when I told him that I could. I think if he knew the little things I was up to it would blow his mind. I do worse than ping, I vpn, remote desktop, ftp etc. The only thing I haven't really tried yet is a web server. That was simply because I couldn't get Win 2003 server to deal with my wifi on a radius properly (a task I will one day pick up under Nix.)

All the guy needs to do is flash his Speedtouch 536 to a recent firmware version. After he does that he can verify some settings related to incoming requests. The new speedtouch firmware allows for integration with Dynamic DNS. He should get himself an auto-updated account so that he doesn't have to remember the ip- like a lame person.

Geez, tired of these NOobs.

The Last Stand

So I went to see Xmen: The Last Stand last night. I wanted to go on Friday but it was sold out. Last night was fine because the theatre got smart and used two cinemas instead of one. I watched it with my brother and some close friends.

The movie. Click on the picture and you will go to a site that has a bunch of reviews. Here is my review:

The movie is HAAARD. I am glad I saw it in theatres. It is definately a summer blockbuster. It is filled with action and has some critical plot elements. They take the story of Xmen, twist it and show you something unexpected. The thing that made the movie so stunning is that they broke most if not all of the sacred rules that every Xmen fan expects to be maintained. People died. Important people died, lives changed forever- etc. When I say important I am talking about foundation people.

Coincidentally I am still waiting on the Gambit story entrance. They dropped him just because some dude from Lost didn't want it. Gambit used to be my third favourite character.

Fire pon a Cyclops! Fire pon a Rogue! Don't burn them in the same flame... independent yet everlasting fires.

I wanted to give a spoiler but I wont. My advice is forget the reviews- they all suck. Look within your heart as an Xmen fan and appreciate that if you knew exactly what would happen you would be wasting your money at the theatre. Keep an open mind. The most important thing- DO NOT GET UP. Even if you see the credits rolling and you are feeling pissed off do not move from your seat until the curtains are closed. If you dare move you would have wasted ALL your money.